America has always been a country of self-invention. Yet there used to be some correlation between the life that one lived and the life that one professed. It was hard to be a phony in the grimy reality of the coal mine, the steel mill, the south 40 acres, or atop a girder over Manhattan.

No longer in our post-modern, post-industrial, metrosexual fantasyland. The nexus of big government, big money, and globalization has created a new creed of squaring the circle of being both liberal and yet elitist, egalitarian-talking but rich-acting, talking like a 99 percenter and living like a 1 percenter. And the rub is not that the two poles are contradictory, but that they are, in fact, necessary for each other: talking about the people means it is OK to live unlike the people.

In short, we can all be just what we profess to be. The key in our world of blue-jeaned billionaires is being hip — or rather at least professing to be hip.

But what is hip? Mostly it is a state of mind, a religion, a talk, a look, an outward persona that is the key that unlocks you from the ramifications of your ideology.

Hip is like “cool”, whose power I wrote about not long ago: a general sense of tapping into the popular youth culture of music, fashion, food, electronics, easy left-wing politics, and adolescent habit. Hipness is a tool designed to justify enjoying the riches and leisure produced by the American brand of Western market capitalism by poking fun at it, teasing it some, dressing it up a bit to suggest ambivalence over its benefits without ever seriously either understanding their source or, much less, losing them. We feel hip at Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods, but not so much in the organic section of Safeway.

Hip also plays out as professed caring — worrying in the abstract about all sorts of endangered species, starving peoples, or degraded environments. It is being loudly angry at retrograde forces — white males, the rich, gun owners, Christians, family types, and suburbanites, the sorts who ostensibly crafted the toxicity of Western civilization that you are forced to use and enjoy. Yet embrace hip, and all things become possible. A Martian would see the modern university as an elitist enclave, where life-long tenured professors make lots of money overseen by hordes of even better-paid administrators, that together cause tuition for cash-strapped and indebted students to rise faster than the rate of inflation without any promises that their eventual certifications will result in commensurate good jobs. A non-Martian would instead appreciate the hip nexus of diversity, eco-caring, and gender-neutral inclusivity.

Hip is a sort of Neanderthal mentality that is terrified of serious thinking, and thus substitutes the superfluous for the profound.

Palestinians are hip in a way that Israelis are not; but pro-Palestinian reporters stay in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv without a clue why the two cities are different from Ramallah. Hip is loud support for the Dream Act, but avoidance of places like Mendota or San Joaquin, or any serious contemplation about why millions of Mexican nationals wish to cross their northern but not their southern border. Hip is shopping at Whole Foods, but supporting more food stamps for those who shop at a distant Food 4 Less and weigh more than you do. Hip decries school choice and vouchers, but means Sidwell Friends is under armed guards for your own progenies.

Tell an uninformed hipster that Obama wants to outlaw abortion, and abortion can suddenly become very unhip.

Hip is furor over Cheneyite Scooter Libby — tried for an Orwellian crime that didn’t exist, and if it did exist, it was committed by someone else — while snoozing through Fast and Furious and Benghazi.

Hip is certainly not Halliburton, but most certainly is Solyndra. The unhip Patriot Act, renditions, and Guantanamo are suddenly now kind of hip; so are drone targeted-assassinations — a sort of “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Predator.” If we bomb Iran, we will be OK — if only Snoop Dogg high-fives the mission, the pilots are gay, the bombers run on biofuels, and the shrapnel is recyclable. Let us hope that the outgoing F-22s have a Che logo painted on the side as they blow stuff up.

Corporate Hipsters

Take also finance. America loves — and loves to hate — Wal-Mart, the cut-rate discount store that draws in millions in the concrete and repulses them in the abstract, perhaps because it originated in Arkansas and is unimaginatively named after the late Sam Walton, a scheming, up-from-the-bootstraps self-made zillionaire. Could Sam not have been Jacques Cartier — and thus Cartier-Marqueé? The chain, so the writ against it goes, supposedly drives out local small businesses, treats its employees unfairly, and represents the worst of crass American hucksterism.

But if Wal-Mart were just hip — in the sense only of a hipster veneer — it would be mostly exempt from such criticism. Starbucks, for example, is a similar global franchiser. It, like Wal-Mart, has been hit with charges of European tax avoidance, and accused of dodging local planning procedures and of operating at a loss to drive out small competitors. It is also at odds with various unionizing efforts. But Starbucks, in our shallow public imagination, remains hip and thus gets a public pass in a way Wal-Mart does not. Kids brag that they work at Starbucks, not at Wal-Mart. Maybe it is the literary name taken from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (could not Wal-Mart be renamed Gandalf’s, Sherlock’s, or Lancelot’s?)? Or does its hipness derive from the literary quotations that it slaps on products, or its sales of “Ethos” water?

Could not Wal-Mart put memorable lines from Shakespeare on its plastic bags, or a Greek hexameter from Homer, or sell vitamin water called Sophos, Kalos, or Logos, or pipe in John Lennon’s “Imagine”?

Would Google have had more trouble for all its outsourcing and overseas tax avoidance had it been named American Internet, Inc., or if its founders had grown up together as good ol’ boys in Mobile, Alabama, who still had a nagging propensity for putting patriotic slogans under the Google logo when the browser pops up each morning? Imagine waking and hitting the American Internet, Inc. logo — and then reading “Live free or die” before your search. (How odd that liberals — e.g., “the medium is the message” — always lectured us about advertising-driven false demand, and then became past masters of deceptive branding.)

Warren Buffett and George Soros are apparently hip; the Koch brothers are not.

How did that come about, given that there is not much difference in the capitalist modes in which they all became billionaires? After all, a Koch brother did not try to break the Bank of England, or get convicted of a crime in France. Warren Buffett’s choice to leave much of his estate to the Gates Foundation will cost all of us billions in lost federal estate tax revenue. And his efforts to hike estate taxes on the upper middle class would mean that a keystone of his empire — life insurance — might profit handsomely. Could Obama just jet to Omaha and say: “Warren, HHS and HUD have a funding problem; could you steer a few billions their way in your estate?”

The difference is that Buffett and Soros espouse liberal causes and progressive politicians. CEO Jeffrey Immelt not only won lots of tax concessions for GE, but also did so without much public rebuke. You see, he was a loud proponent of Barack Obama and once bankrolled MSNBC. (Did Eugene Robinson ever blast on the air his patron for not paying his fair share?). That in and of itself provided exemption from charges of crony capitalism and insider influence peddling — and the fact that GE paid no income taxes in 2010.

If the executives of Solyndra had been coal-company CEOs, they would now be in deep trouble for squandering public funds obtained through rank cronyism.

We don’t worry much when Facebook or Google invades private lives; we worry a great deal when frackers produce oil without polluting the environment. BP had it right — keep the familiar abbreviation and green color and just say the logo now means an eco-friendly “Beyond Petroleum” (rather than the neo-colonialist British Petroleum) as you pump more gas and oil than ever. Government Motors will soon not be a parody; but Green Motors would be even better.

What’s in a Name?

So: hip is often as easy as changing one’s name. Had Mitt Romney only reminded us of his family’s Mexican ancestry and ran as Zarpa Romneo, and against Barry Dunham. We do not associate the billion-dollar couple — rapper Jay-Z and singer Beyoncé — with the one-percent elite who made zillions through music, endorsements, and scores of cutthroat capitalist subsidiary companies. Would Barack Obama dare lecture them: “You did not build those businesses”? Or “Come on — at some point you made enough money”? Or,“Hey, you two, now is not the time to profit”?

Would the two seem different to the public had they been known as Beyoncé Knowles and Shawn Carter? Would a Barry Dunham or even Barry Obama have quite found the hip resonance of Barack Obama?

Why did we agonize over George Bush’s purported cocaine use while a youth, when Barack Obama, of Choom Gang affiliation, openly bragged in his memoirs of using “blow”? One was a seen as a pampered frat wastrel, the other a literary and confused man “coming of age” in an uncertain world, turning to Niebuhr for solace.

Hipness can be especially hard to acquire for old white guys who have tons of money and will do almost anything to increase it — like a stingy John Kerry who tried to avoid $500,000 in property taxes by moving his $7M yacht to Rhode Island, or a conniving green Nobel Laureate Al Gore who just sold his $100 million interest in Current TV to the anti-American al-Jazeera funded by the fossil-fuel burning royal family of Qatar, and attempted to beat the new 2013 tax hikes in the process. (What a liberal trifecta!) But as exemption for not buying a $5 million dollar yacht and paying his taxes with the savings, Kerry often harangues for high taxes on others. And we remember his passionate 1960s protest career. (Ghhenzzzis Khan made far better senatorial drama than Genghis Khan). For dessert, Kerry wind-surfs and wears spandex while bike riding. Add all that up and Kerry is exempted from the Occupy Wall Street disdain of one-percenters. He is one of the good guys, mansions, yachts, and all.

Al Gore — aging, rotund, white, male, and southern-accented — made nearly a billion dollars. By any classical definition — the house in which he lives in, the transportation that he prefers, the accusations of sexual harassment he has incurred, the modes in which he made his money — Gore is an abject hypocrite. But we do not live in a classical society of reason and logic, and so Al Gore is hip and therefore exempt from such charges. He has become more associated with worrying about poor stranded polar bears trapped on melting ice flows than junketing to his next corporate, profit-maximizing conference on a carbon-spewing Gulfstream V.

Bill Clinton gave us the notion of offsets — one nod to a piece of feminist legislation and, presto, one piece of a young intern subordinate becomes OK.

Do we care that Andrea Mitchell and Chris Matthews are multimillionaires, live in exclusive districts, or embrace a lifestyle unknown to most Americans, when they so loudly each week warn us about racism, sexism, and the pathologies of the rich white male establishment of which they are such a part? Apparently Ms. Mitchell climbs on her soapbox haranguing about “rednecks” from 9-5, and then goes home to her Ayn Rand-reading, uber-capitalist, stock-buying and selling husband Alan Greenspan without a blink in between.

Again, the one is not so much at odds with the other as explains the other.

If Katie Couric were a spokeswoman for GM or Chrysler, would we resent her $15 million salary, and cite it as an example of the growing divide between the relative compensation of management and labor? But trash Sarah Palin, and Couric is no longer an overpaid one-percenter. Is CBS hip and therefore exempt in the way the New York Times fights tooth and nail against unionization, or Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio are not dubbed parasites for raking in $30 to 50 million per year?

How did David Letterman survive serial affairs with subordinate employees, after creating the classic “hostile workplace environment” that feminists are otherwise so quick to pounce on? Apparently, he is hip enough to be able to slander 14-year-old Willow Palin as a veritable prostitute.

In the Obama world of zero-sum economics, does LeBron James’s $15 million a year come at the expense of an extra dollar or two on the ticket of the hard-pressed fan? Or does the fact that LeBron is hip exempt him from association with his fellow fat cats? Could the Tea Party just change its name to Occupy Washington?

Barack Obama baffles his detractors. How can one who golfs so frequently, or who vacations in only the most tony resorts, keep haranguing the nation about the transgressions of the one percent? When he sees them stroll by on Martha’s Vineyard, does he jump up and shout out at their mansions: “You didn’t build that!”?

How did corpse-man not win the NPR vitriol that nu-cu-lar had in the past?

How could Obama in 2006 vote against raising the debt ceiling, in 2008 call Bush unpatriotic for deficit spending, upon entering office promise to halve the deficit by the end of his first term, and then oversee some $5 trillion in new borrowing? Hip: borrowing became “stimulus”; entitlements, “investments”; and paying it all back became “paying your fair share.” In Obama’s case, he is not just black, but black with an exotic name and a liberal ideology, unlike a Clarence Thomas, who is most unhip — being right-wing, not of mixed race, with an ordinary American name (Clarence?), veteran of the prejudices of the pre-Civil Rights south. Could not Thomas shorten his name to just the single Tomré? Or perhaps go the Van Jones made-up route — Van Thomas?

In a shallow and superficial America you can make all the money you like without being dubbed selfish or greedy, frequent all the most exclusive resorts without being a one-percenter, and commit all the politically incorrect sins you wish without being tagged a reactionary — but you better try to be hip first.

173 Comments, 63 Threads

1.
Paula Bolyard

The ancient Greek word for hypocrite referred to acts of impersonation or deception and was used of an actor on the stage. In the Greek drama, actors held oversized masks over their faces, painted to represent the characters they were portraying.

The problem in our culture is that so many people believe the actors are real…Al Gore, Honey Boo Boo, Leo DiCaprio, Chris Matthews, Snookie…which are wearing masks?

Well, at least one in Honey BooBoo’s family isn’t a complete idiot. Apparently, the mother has put the reality TV money in a trust for the girls. It’s too bad they’ll all likely blow through it as soon as they can legally get their chubby hands on it.

I actually admire that mom. She knew a few things in life: they were poor, likely to stay poor, uneducated and when this chance to exploit the hell out of her daughter came around she knew it was a once in a lifetime opportunity to provide for her children. Sounds like a level headed realist to me.

I just hope she is able to impress upon her daughters that this is a once in a lifetime nestegg and they utilize it wisely.

Liberals watch that trainwreck to feel holier than thou, while midAmerica recognizes the love and respect between daughters and Mom and Dad. The sisters know how to have fun . . . contrasted to the sad, lonely, Facebook driven lives of desparation of the rich kid.

I spent a summer doing volunteer work for Save The Children among a whole community of Honey Boo Boo and her Mama. As a lifetime City Girl who didn’t know her backside from first base when it came to country life, I came in for plenty of kidding, but since I made it clear that I was the fish out of water and was perfectly willing to be teased, to admit my ignorance, and to fall in with the reality of my surroundings and do as my hostesses did (including bathing in a freshwater pool with a piece of soap and my sponge and half a dozen female companions; the piped in water was sulphurous and could only be used for flushing), I soon knew the other side of folks as the other volunteers, who stayed in motels and only came up for the day, never did. That lot thought they were Hip and Cool; we thought they were ignoranti.

Because the twin arms of the Communications prong to the Fundamental Transformation, media and education, will either not mention you or actively misportray what you are doing to create a false belief system about who you are and what drives you as long as you have the right political beliefs. Even if there is no indication you live the rhetoric like Gore or Letterman.

You can attend London conferences last May on “Breakthrough Capitalism” like Hewlett while using your foundation to finance deep equitable learning that creates desired “feelings” for change. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/when-deep-learning-and-systems-thinking-radicalizes-the-student-factual-reality-ceases-to-matter/ And then when those cultivated feelings, ignorance and false information, and reverence for Sustainability and the environment drive adult behaviors as was always the intention, you can be part of the technology consortium to help the federal government use all that social media data and supercomputers to centrally plan the economy around the Ecosystem.

Yes, I do have that report too. Released by the National Academy of Sciences a few months ago. It even mentions using the media and selected issues when needed to “arouse” the electorate for change.

Why it’s all just Connected Capitalism isn’t it? It’s the 21st Century, no more need for those silly distinctions between the public and private sector. Everyone who matters is just politically connected and “collaborating to compete.” Like Immelt’s China.

And the whole part about the beauty of Walmart being the lower prices as a percentage of income or wages for necessary goods and services gets left out of the free markets story. It’s the selfish capitalism where no one has any incentive to cooperate, unlike the altruistic public sector. Who needs to know the story of bringing silk stockings to most of us instead of just the Queen when you can fixate on what Walmart pays per hour?

These are the cards we have been dealt ever since Eve listen to that old libertarian snake and Adam went along and Cain became the first conservative: Why should I give God my red meat sacrifice ? And Able who gave from his heart was blessed and Cain became a murderer and the game goes on
as time marches on Hitler pointing the finger at Stalin and Stalin pointing the finger at Hitler
What to do ? With the God of divine Love there is a way to get your innocence restored
John 3
John 3 (New International Version)

New International Version (NIV)
Jesus Teaches Nicodemus

3 Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2 He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”

3 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.[a]”

4 “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”

5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit[b] gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You[c] must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”[d]

Romat, please educate me: what is the source of all that was, is, and will be? If you believe the universe is self-generating, explain how that works. If you can’t explain it and are willing to begin your education, you might start with a book (look on Amazon) by a very literate physicist entitled The Science of God. If you can refute his thesis, get back to me. In the meantime STFU moron.

Those who demand that religion cease existing for their own benefit/pleasure (holier-than-thou athiests, marxists, what have you); those who demand that religion subsume all thinking and processes (“social” conservatives, nutjobs, people who avoid considering a world in which we are responsible for our own actions); and, everyone else, the multitude of whom either pretend to care, pick and choose what to believe without believing it, or are capable of justifying a way of living harmoniously with others (or at least without feeling the need to harm everything that moves) that doesn’t rely on an invisible sky magician who will damn them for making an incorrect choice.

Liberals consist of those who would make government their God, without seeing the irony in pursuing religion to extinction while either serving men or elevating themselves to god kings. Conservatives consist of those who would make their government in the image of their God, without seeing the danger in just who decides what God believes today and what that means when God changes his mind.

Why am I forced to choose between these two insane factions just so I can profess to believe in freedom, human dignity, personal responsibility, self preservation, and pursuit of happiness? Why must you all choose your God and impose him on others? Whether it is the Man in Washington, or the Man in the Sky, why do you feel the need to serve? Man is not so full of hubris that he can’t survive without an omnipotent authority figure telling him how to live.

Socrates asked us to ask questions. When liberals and conservatives want us to stop asking questions and obey their flavor, I have to ask “Why should I?” Liberals say to question authority, but never question their own. Conservatives say to question not, lest you be led to doubt, but doubt is what has elevated humans above animals, not belief.

Am I doing the right thing? Am I doing it the right way? Why do I feel this is the right thing? How do I justify it? You live in fear and admiration of deities, but fail to ask simple questions, seeking answers that can only come from within, and not from someone else.

Have you actually read the New Testament? Many so-called or self-proclaimed Christians are not or are really bad ones.

I direct you to Luke 6:42, “How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” and John 8:7 “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”

Too many people bash Chistianity based up Televangelists, Cranks like Westboro Baptist Church, other Cruddy Christians, and caricatures presented by the Left without really understanding what Christ was trying teach us.

And here, ladies and gentlemen, we have before us Exhibit A in what the esteemed author was writing about, the vacuousness and intellectual laziness of hipster culture. You can be as bigoted, irrational, pseudo-intellectual, incurious, ineffective, and ignorant as you want. Just insult something *un*hip like Christianity or conservatism, (and apparently you gain bonus points for doing both at the same time) and voila! Like magic, you too are instantly part of the self-appointed Elite(TM). No actual critical thinking (or thinking at all, really) necessary!

But on a more serious note, what’s on offer from Cynical Blunder and his ilk is the notion that the universe with all of its wonder and staggering diversity amounts to nothing more than the empty dance of atoms. This line of what passes for thinking on their part has its natural corrollary in the belief that human beings are nothing more than things, animals or machines.

This mindset paves the way to, and is a prerequisite for slaughter and atrocity on a scale that beggars the imagination. History is my witness.

Actually “genius” all human morality originates from one “made-up God” or another. Human society has practiced religion of one form or another since before written history. The majority of religions include (and often share) basic moral guide lines that are beneficial to the functioning and prosperity of the society that follows it.

Besides, religion involves faith. People who don’t place thier faith in religion just place their faith elsewhere. Government, material wealth, political ideologies, Joe Pesci, etc.

artghost, Yes, that is why, on the college campus, hipsters flock to the vacuous majors, like psychology, journalism, poli-sci, etc. Unfortunately, it’s the vapid j-school graduates who populate the media and the dull ed. school graduates who ruin the public schools.

I got this explanation of the whole business from Denis Prager when he said that a year’s holiday from ‘motive’ would solve all our problems. The motives of the left are equality and raising up the poor. The results are the biggest pile of dead bodies in human history. The motive of the right is greed and the result is happy free countries. Judge someone on the nobility of their motives and Stalin, Mao, Pierre Trudeau & Obama look great. When I was a kid in Sydney who cared about how I felt? Now, with Sorry Day to the Aboriginals, reaching out to understand Muslim gang members in Sydney’s west and kowtowing to Green looniness, fine feelings are all that counts. People here laugh at the Monarchists who want to preserve the constitution the way it’s always been keeping Australia a free and wonderful country. The Monarchists are not quite as rib-ticklingly redundant as they think.

” The motive of the right is greed and the result is happy free countries”

The worship of the god Molech brought great prosperity something good and happy takes place the sacrifice of children to the god Molech and this is why ancient Israel do this as well and people have been happy getting rich for the most part in USA by murdering 40 million babies in the Mama’s soft tummy. Things stay the same so it seems

Sorry, I don’t quite understand. Worshipping materialism in biblical days meant worshipping a God named Moloch and child sacrifice was part of the worshipping practices. So prosperity and materialism were linked to and resulted in something ghastly. And there’s a parallel to the modern worship of materialism in abortion? So materialism has ugly and hidden penalties or maybe punishments?

It is a very ancient religion. this is why I approach the GREAT sacrifice eat the flesh and blood of Jesus and I am very very happy in great peace and bliss some days doing this. Sacrifice to God is holy unless God changes his mind as God did with Abraham’s son

I’m just waiting for some liberal news site to start claiming waxwing is a normal pjm contributor.

the best case scenario is a westboro baptist type- an acid-tripping liberal tries to be religious. worst case- waxwing is some semi-functional paranoid schizophrenic who is going to pop a cork, abuse a kid, burn down an elementary, and we’re going to be asked why we didn’t notice the warning signs.

Our quaint Aussie may have misspoke–but we should cut him some slack as his country’s founding was on that of a prison. But I think I understand what he was trying to say.

It is “enlighted self-interest” and not greed that your American Founders imbued into your political thinking…which naturally migrated as axiomatic and irreducible principle into your Constitution. In simple terms that even a hipster could understand, it sounds something like this: “You help me get what I want and I’ll help you get what you want.”

The motivesexcuses of the left are equality and raising up the poor. The results are the biggest pile of dead bodies in human history, thus betraying their true motivations.

Fixed.

I believe that motivations are demonstrated by results. And I have never met someone who regarded themselves as a “thought leader” of the left (including in my own family) who did not cherish an utter contempt and soul-burning hatred for somebody- almost invariably someone they regarded as being “morally inferior” to themselves, and thus in need of their benign “guidance”.

If those “moral inferiors” failed to acknowledge the superiority of their “betters”, they needed to be done away with.

The ultimate problem with leftists is the same problem that has always existed with any sort of monarchial system. It is that those who define themselves as the rulers also define themselves as perfect and incapable of error. Sooner or later, they come to resent the intransigence of everyone else who they see as failing to acknowledge their true greatness, and decide to force that acknowledgement. Usually by seeing how many people they can kill to “encourage the others”.

There is also the fact that those who dream of Utopias aren’t generally the caring and sharing type, no matter what they say. In the end, they’re more what my mother used to call the “selfish dog in the manger” breed, who operate on the “what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine, too” principle. Meaning, they want to have everything, and aren’t interested in having anyone else around to annoy them. Except domestic servants, who will do as they’re told- or else.

This also explains the left’s obsession with “gun control”, and its determination to resist any efforts to lock up criminals or the insane. They want a helpless, defenseless populace at the mercy of those they regard as their “frontline soldiers in the war against a repressive society”. Said society being defined as repressive because people other than themselves still have at least some voice in how it is run. This offends them greatly.

Also, when they get bored with simply having power (as absolute rulers invariably do), they don’t want anyone to be able to resist when they begin massacring people just to amuse themselves. (See “Jones, Reverend Jim”, “Ayers, William”.)

The mass murder of “reactionaries” is not a means to an end with leftists; it is an end in itself, a way of once more proving their “superiority”. (see “Pol Pot”,”Charles Manson”, etc.) Rather like the semi-mythical King Acrisius, Perseus’ grandfather who attempted to kill Danae and her infant son to avoid said infant son growing up to kill him, or Gilles de Rais, the entirely non-mythical Marshal of France who indulged in the serial rape and murder of young boys, the modern leftists yearn to cry out to the heavens, “No god would dare do as I do!“.

Believing that there is no God except themselves and their ambitions just makes it easier.

As for why the left says that everything they do is “for the greater good”, “for the children”, etc., many in the rank and file are desperate to convince themselves that they are better than they know themselves to be.

As for the leaders, they simply don’t want anyone to realize just how much they dream of death and destruction until they have the reins of power in their hands. By which time, they conclude, it won’t matter what anyone else knows or thinks. Because only what they want will matter.

Never mistake excuses for true motivations. No con man- or madman- ever got anywhere by openly admitting what he was after.

You think in much the same manner I do, the only difference being that you have the Literary and Philosophical background to back it up.

You’re one of the only other posters I’ve seen who truly ‘gets’ it, the culture of Control, Power, and Death that so many on the Left so lust for, the yearning for a return to the Blood Aristocracy (funneled through Harvard and Yale, in the current age, which are little more than Finishing Schools for The Chosen) and the human chattel.

No, some of us get it. They’ve been steadily eroding people’s ability to think and reason and see for themselves what’s going on for a long time now, and they’ve been working hard to convert as many as they can into useful idiots who think that “it really can’t be all that bad” to be ruled.

They’ve eroded our communities, our families, our faiths, so that we have increasingly become a nation of isolated individuals who have nowhere to turn except to the mechanisms of governance when we need support, and they’ve put themselves in the power structures.

Now, they’re openly starting to work toward the end game, and in order for there to be the kind of total control they desire, they need to do two things – reduce the population and break its spirit. They can do this one way with a ruthless and brutal cull of undesirables, but they have to disarm us as much as possible first.

aharris. Please repeat this post every time this subject comes up in conversation. These sentences of yours are compact truth and explain our current America better than any other I’ve read. We are in such danger and at such disadvantage for fighting back and winning.

But we can fight back and win. But it seems we need as-yet-undiscovered champions to arise and lead us, and help us.

I agree. There are some of us, too, dishwashers and handymen, in our 40s, who never once set foot in a college classroom, who can see what is plain to see.

I spent a lot of time in libraries as a kid, and tried my best to devour their entire contents, as much as I was ever able to comprehend.

Not all of us have read “the classics”, except for bits and pieces quoted here and there. The greatest philosophical writers of antiquity have only reached my ears through the writings (and blog-comments) of people vastly more familiar with them than myself.

Like EON’s comment right there. I’ll be saving this whole thread to my PC.

eon is right. The progs. They like whatever their Father likes.

They fantasize about all the worst things the human mind can comprehend. They are “inventors of evil”. One need only remember: Rape of Nanking, Holodomor, Shoah, Killing Fields, and even Saddam’s “ingenious, fun and cool by Hollywood and HIP standards” uses of dogs to kill women just for the temporary, drunken amusement of the cabinet, his uses of plastic shredding machines to bag people up in, and deposit on the doorsteps of their family homes.

—
Romans 1:30ff

28 And as they liked not to have God in their knowledge, God delivered them up to a reprobate sense, to do those things which are not convenient;
29 Being filled with all iniquity, malice, fornication, avarice, wickedness, full of envy, murder, contention, deceit, malignity, whisperers,
30 Detractors, hateful to God, contumelious, proud, haughty, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
31 Foolish, dissolute, without affection, without fidelity, without mercy.
32 Who, having known the justice of God, did not understand that they who do such things, are worthy of death; and not only they that do them, but they also that consent to them that do them.

Eon writes with great skill. I think many people see the world through the same prism but haven’t sorted it out in their minds enough to write with such clarity. I agree that we are heading back to a society of aristocratic priviledge. The left, government bureaucrats and their courtiers, the lobbyists, fashion themselves as the new aristocracy. The president presides over all as monarch. That we are heading there should surprise no one. The aristocratic caste system has long shown itself to be more compatible with human nature than the occasional republican experiments throughout history. Historically, republics – Greek, Roman – gave way to despotism of this sort. Europe is well along the path and the U.S. may follow.

you have talents but your defending the guilty from the ones who you believe are more guilty why not spend your time learning about innocence to get a peak of heaven? Although it is this innocence that makes sure on the very wide road leading to hell they stay there for eternity but I believe when those in hell get a peak at innocence they begin to be greatest defenders of the innocent saints in heaven which may mean as i believe hell is temporary where one can peak into purgatory as those in purgatory get peaks at heaven.

The blind atheist perhaps this atheism is a gift from God so he not try to become innocent holy too quickly

It is a rare thing here on PJM where the logic falls apart in the commentary. Especially on a VDH article. Gentlemen and ladies, please state your case, but do it logically. A Newtonian cause and effect construct please. Let it rip in the by-lines in passing, but make an intelligent argument first…

Greed does not follow from capitalism anymore than thievery follows from lack of conscious. These things are mutally exclusive. Capitalism a consequence of the natural order of a free people. Capitalism is a derived good based on the self interest of providing a good for our fellow man. Capitalism is not a construct in and of itself, it is a result of the natural order of a free people. Nothing more, nothing less.

So anything else used to define this natural order is total BS. And pretty much all the misery man has inflicted upon our human race boils down to this undeniable truth:

People seek freedom. Governments seek servitude.

This is the task to be solved that faced our founders in what is now the USA.

Worked great until the communist infiltration into our institutions. They have declared war not on the USA, they have declared war on freedom.

“Capitalism is a derived good based on the self interest of providing a good for our fellow man”

Oh my goodness. Is this something you learnt from Rush? Tell that to the Gordon Gecko’s of the world. There are a LOT of them. They don’t trade on derivatives on Wall Street out of a spirit of altruism. “Greed is Good”.

Heard of Dante’s 4th circle of Hell? He created this special place for a reason. Leave man to his own desires and the world will be a better place? Oh dear…

You do not live in the real world. There is an unspoken construct of civil society upon which you cannot fathom.

Let’s just say a guy opens a business. It is upon this man or women to offer something of worth. A thing of worth due to economic efficiencies that results in a profit. This profit will sustain the owner’s livelihood and those of his employees. If in this construct of freedom the guy does not offer a product at a price that has value added, they go out of business.

Helping your fellow man is a construct built into the system of freedom. Again, Capitalism is not a construct unto itself. It is a result.

There will always be the bad apples. Mostly on the maniputators from the left mind you. Gordon Gecko explained this in simple terms. And yes, I have that little turd speech memorized. If you look at the entirity of the movie, you should have come to the conclusion I did: Everyone gets burned big time.

Descartes? Really? The first philospher of modern philosophy is such a place you do not want to go with me. I will hand you your ass to you on the topic.

Bill, without the ability to collude with government and its coercive force of law, the ability of capitalists to exploit us against our will is VERY limited.

The fact that Sears, Penneys, et. al. weren’t able to shut down Mr. Walton’s enterprise after he opened up his third store or so, but instead saw a lot of business taken from them by Mr. Walton and his associates over the years, is evidence of this.

This is one of the fundamental fallacies of Progressives … they fight against the “threat” of such “exploitation”, even as they expand the opportunities for real exploitation by expanding government.

Very well said good sir. Your logic is sound, however, I’d like to hear your thoughts as to the basis of political beliefs? Can it not be said that such beliefs are also birthed from natural human interactions? I concede that politics can and has risen to the level of fanatical religious beliefs, complete with backwardsness and complex rigamarole, but if we try to remember the origins of our own, personal enlightenment as to the realm of politics, can we not conclude it is a simple case of one ‘awakening’ to the many horrors and flaws of reality? We are reacting to this horror with political thought, even if such thoughts are most likely those of others (Marx, your high school history teacher, et al), until such time as we can begin formulating our own political beliefs. My point is that politics are at once incredibly complex and yet very simple. We vilify ‘the other side’, and blame them for such horrific undertakings that we quickly degrade into a conspiracy-theorist mentality, in which ‘we’ (Republicans, Democrats, Socialist, or whomever with which you associate) are fighting a wave of faceless, nameless evil, and our efforts must succeed soon or else the world will collapse. If you replace ‘politics’ with ‘economics’, we can see that your defense of Capitalism can turned into a defense against the political machine which you so passionately hate. Just as our friend bill hates Capitalism, so to do you hate those with opposing political views. Its all the same.

So Bill, according to your convoluted logic the masses of humanity are too dumb and ignorant to run their own lives so a tiny minority of elites, such as yourself must run their lives for them as you and a small cabal of progressives are the Prometheus of mankind, granted by divine providence to run and shape our subaltern lives.

Enjoy your short lived sense of euphoria as it will be short lived. It always is. It may take a few years, but slowly most people will be revolted by your type and boot you and other progressives out of the mainstream and out of government.

A voluntary exchange between two parties in which BOTH parties benefit is not greed. It shouldn’t be a strange concept either . You do it every day, usually facilitated by currency (not money, there isn’t any money in the USA anymore) . Are you greedy when you exchange 1 dollar (or whatever it now costs) for a copy of the New York Slimes ? are they ? Usually it is the mentally deficient or incompetent, those who are unable to offer anything of value for exchange, who belittle their betters who, through native intelligence , hard work, and or training, do have desirable goods and service to exchange, by calling them greedy . Usually this is just an expression of envy. Sometimes , and more seriously, it is evidence of being completely delusional. You believe that everyone must give you whatever you want because of your innate wonderfulness (sort of like our amusingly mad president).

Sorry, I don’t quite understand. Worshipping materialism in biblical days meant worshipping a God named Moloch and child sacrifice was part of the worshipping practices. So prosperity and materialism were linked to and resulted in something ghastly. And there’s a parallel to the modern worship of materialism in abortion? So materialism has ugly and hidden penalties or maybe punishments?

This is my concern on how evil can take over the mind and heart of a person. It seems Jepthah in the Old testament sacrifice his daughter on the altar to God This was the old religion Abraham was commanded by God to do on his son. All those sacrificing their children in the old religion believe they were serving God and they kept their innocence in the worship of God. But with Abraham , God sending the angel to freeze Abrahams hand something was born on the earth in a relationship with God that moved beyond animal sacrifice since man could be considered just another animal before Abraham by Abraham’s faith
Then with Jesus raised from the dead death and ain were defeated and the new way would keep the memory alive on how you can eat Jesus flesh and blood and not harm Jesus at all and Jesus appears to people even to this day
Death and destruction still rule fallen man. But with the revelation there is a Holy God and there are Holy angels far more than the number of humans on the earth and now there are holy saints and what they all want is more saints The first step is to restore a the innocence of the human being and then the Divine Love can pour down from the holy spirit
In a nation that has murdered 40 million innocent babies in the Mamas tummy it seems to me Demons are released from hell innocence is lost forever unless the Holy God the Holy Angels and the Holy Saints intervene in the nation
How do you feel about the 40 million innocent babies? how is it different if it were 40 million 1 month old babies murdered legal by the nation?

For those who have been saved from abortion and child death as Moses was saved from Pharaoh and Jesus was saved from King Herod and I was saved by miracle in the process of being aborted

4.Deliver me , my God, from the hand of the wicked from the grasp of those who are evil and cruel
5.For you have been my hope, Sovereign Lord, my confidence since my youth
6. From birth I have relied on you, you brought me forth from my mother’s womb
I wILL EVER PRAISE YOU
7 I have become a sign to many, You are my Strong Refuge

Faux “liberalism”, the cubit zirconium of political theater is a get out of jail free card for charlatans and empty suits. It requires no critical thinking, no reasoning power, no individualism and no logic. It requires only fealty and cult-like obedience to the playbook.

As faux liberalism drifts further and further left into despotic and vile tyranny, it takes on a harder edge. Betrayal and traitorism are no longer confined to the shadows.

Basically, Zombie Turncoat Brigades goosestep around chanting mindless drivel and salute sloganeering twits like Kerry, Gore and other flunkies who amassed mostly D’s in the classroom, but made their awards on fraudulent and vile attacks against their own country…a sure ticket to a Nobel trinket or Hollywood tin statue.

If you wish to win an award in Hollywood…be the loudest traitor and the most mindless cultist. Pulitzer or Nightly News Emmy? Don’t plague your eyes…plagiarize! Tenure in academia? Hardcore socialism is the speed rail to success.

The system of self-congratulatory “rewards” for being a good, mindless, goosestepper perpetuates and inflates the brain dead leftist.

But hip? Hmmm.

When treason and mindless cultism become “hip”…tyranny is no longer just a disease. It’s a death sentence.

Don’t equate Warren Buffoon and George Soros with the Koch Brothers. Soros and Buffoon are the consumate behind the scenes manipulators for their own material gain. They are the fascists, bending government to their will for their enrichment. And just who let the criminal Soros into the U.S.?

Walmart has a hipster branch. It has a cute dog and fancy commercials — it’s called Target. //sarc

#12 After the Cold War ended and we got a look at KGB archives we discovered that Armand Hammer was the COMMINTERN’s bagman. Some folks at the CIA believed that a guy named George Soros was being groomed as Hammer’s replacement.

Dr. Hanson, you have made my day. Your essay has reminded me that I live comfortably and totally immersed in an all-American rural environment that the “hip” could not possibly survive in. Praise the Lord that such environs still exist! Now, on with my orange and off to the woods to find where the deer are moving.

It’s an interesting subject, well stated by Victor Hanson, and a challenge to one’s perceptions.

The narrative is that, for example, the ’50s was a decade of conformism, the ’60s the opposite.

Yet ask yourself why people in the ’50s would seek to look alike if not to hide their innate non-conformism and eccentricity and why the generation of the ’60s sought to advertise their iconoclasm and eccentricity if in fact the truth is it was not innate to them. The truth was that the ’60s crowd, and to this day, were hopelessly middle-class people with middle-class values who were ashamed of it.

This is why men start wearing earrings and women get tattoos; what is not on the inside can be advertised on the outside. No better example can be given then the world of the fine arts from the ’60s and stretching into today. Generally speaking, the artists sought, through their art, to prove they weren’t middle-class, but were in fact the biggest group of conformist rednecks I have ever met.

This “cult of cool” is destructive creatively. Top 40 music is as conformist and sound-alike as it ever has been. Rap music resembles the droning of an insect and once creative, almost fine art genres that produced unique work like fantasy and science-fiction literature have given way to pedantry and repetition, not to say doltishness.

The men and women who produced such wonderfully eccentric expressions of pop art in the ’50s like the short stories Fondly Fahrenheit by Alfred Bester or The Big Front Yard by Clifford Simak or the film “An American In Paris” would laugh at the idea artists in 2012 have a more diverse output.

It’s important to remember that, for the most part, the “60s generation” were not the actual rebels, leaders, and innovators in culture, politics, etc. Most of the men and women who instigated the changes that occurred in that decade were all relatively old, born between 1900 and 1940. Too old to be Boomers, people with their own, old agendas. Malcolm X was born in 1925. Allen Ginsberg – 1926. Pete Seeger – 1919. Che – 1928. Charles Manson – 1934. Timothy Leary, everybody’s favorite drug guru, was born in 1920.

I think there’s a reason “gurus” were so popular back then. Children rejected their parents’ values but they needed somebody – anybody – to tell them what to do and who to be. They were lost sheeple, followers, desperate to appear hip. The oldsters, who for years had nurtured their grudges against society, suddenly found themselves commanding vast armies of clueless youth. Who wouldn’t take advantage?

Having lived through the 60′s and walked through egomaniacal speeches of Mario Savio, Jerry Rubin, Angela Davis et al. in Sproul Plaza, having hung out at Big Sur and met some of the Esalan crowd, I am daily amazed and astounded that the culture all these years later is so crass, shallow and commercial.

The only thing that “took” from those days, apparently, is the cultural dissolution and postmodernist ideas.

Except they’re not iconoclasts — they’re run-of-the-mill fanatics. Iconoclasts smashed icons of sacred figures of their OWN faith — the left never confronts the icons of their faith. They’ll gleefully smash a manger, joyfully knock down a menorah — but don’t you dare mention the eugenics motivation behind Margaret Sanger’s birth control campaign!

It seems worth mentioning the lyrics from Pleasant Valley Sunday, a 1967 hit for The Monkees.

“Rows of houses that are all the same
And no one seems to care

See Mrs. Gray she’s proud today because her roses are in bloom
Mr. Green he’s so serene, He’s got a t.v. in every room”

And also mentioning Pete Seeger’s 1963 hit, Little Boxes.

“Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same,

All went to the university,
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same,”

And it went on into the ’80s with Rush’s Subdivision -

“Sprawling on the fringes of the city
In geometric order

Opinions all provided
The future pre-decided
Detached and subdivided
In the mass production zone

Nowhere is the dreamer or the misfit so alone”

And they’re still doing it, as witness this from Arcade Fire:

“Quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock
Sometimes I wonder if the world’s so small
Can we ever get away from the sprawl?

Living in the sprawl, dead shopping malls rise”

It seems to never have occurred to the song writers that the people inside the houses are not the houses. I feel this smug take on conformity wasn’t a concern but an addiction to spiritual high ground, the youth culture’s own “keeping up with the Jones.” Or “I’m better than you,” comes to mind.

When those tacky subdivisions were first being built, they were regarded as affordable housing for returning servicemen and average working people. Their density and standardized appearance weren’t as important as providing large numbers of people with nice homes in safe, clean, quiet neighborhoods. They were a good thing before some poet declared them “ticky-tacky.”

All those people are morons and I can prove it. They would be the first people in line to “ew & aw” the Indian way of life – never realizing they were just as conformist as anglo-westerners. They just chose to live in identical cones instead of boxes.

Well, Rush at least has strong libertarian influences so their motivations are likely not the same as Seeger or others.

But on the overall topic of the “conformist” suburban lifestyle, it is worth noting what alternatives exist. The average American suburban home is a mansion by worldwide standards. Soviet citizens risked death at the Berlin wall to come to the west and live in one of those “mundane” single family homes rather than some shoddy public housing project. It’s worth noting that the modern “green” left sees the great alternative as being again crammed into tiny apartments in dense urban areas. They hate the American car culture and freedom of the highway because they hate the self reliance and independence that the private vehicle affords even the poor in this country to have.

As much as the left wing icons may rail against consumer conformity, their vision is mandated conformity at the point of a gun. The “dreamer” or “visionary” who feels imprisoned in the suburbs would do well to reflect that if he’d held his views half a century ago in the USSR he’d have been living in a gulag instead of an air-conditioned mansion.

This is a true story: in ’86 I met a foreign exchange student from Russia and he insisted the reason the suburbs in America had housing relatively spread out compared to Europe was that it prevented Americans from staging revolutions.

The guy really believed it. I was stunned at how indoctrinated the guy was. It was a measure of how far up their behinds gov’t was in the Soviet Union.

It’s true that when a suburban development is newly built, all of the houses are built to two or three plans and look nearly identical. The trees were all cut down before the houses were built and the place looks practically antiseptic.

But the suburban development where I live is over 50 years old. Most if not all of the houses have passed through multiple owners who have all left their stamp. Roofs, windows, and siding have all been replaced. Some houses have had additions added, along with decks and hot tubs. One house on the street behind me had an additional story built a couple of years ago. In some cases, the insides have been completely gutted and radically altered.

A brand-new development has bare ground. After 50 years, there are trees of all kinds, including some truly enormous ones. People like to plant trees. In addition to that, each house has its own shrubs, flower gardens, vegetable gardens, and/or landscaping.

I can assure you that after 50 years, every house in a suburban development is absolutely unique.

Aside from the roof, windows, and siding, my own house is practically original, right down to the Formica countertops with the boomerang-shaped squiggles. Modern hipsters pay good money for “retro” kitchens like I have. My gas range with pilot lights is original, too, and it kept working when my electricity went out for three days after Hurricane Sandy, allowing me to heat up the leftovers that were thawing in my freezer. I never even had to dip into my canned food stockpile.

It may be that the hip writers and poets were reacting to the sterile appearance of new suburban developments. Yet they didn’t show the same disdain for tony New York City brownstones, which also tend to look alike. Or working-class Philadelphia rowhouses, for that matter. No, they seemed to heap special scorn on the suburbs, which were symbols of the ability of free-market capitalism to provide excellent, spacious, and inexpensive housing for ordinary people.

“I think there’s a reason “gurus” were so popular back then. Children rejected their parents’ values but they needed somebody – anybody – to tell them what to do and who to be. They were lost sheeple, followers, desperate to appear hip. The oldsters, who for years had nurtured their grudges against society, suddenly found themselves commanding vast armies of clueless youth. Who wouldn’t take advantage?”

That era was a hustler’s paradise. The endless streams of young were easy pickings for money, sex or what else was desired from them. And that persists. Hucksters are admired, if not worshipped, while who plays it straight is disparaged.

Reading David Horowitz and other former radicals, it’s interesting how Hollywood tools like Jane Fonda and Bert Schneider got rolled by a murderous criminal like Huey Newton and other faux Black revolutionaries like George Jackson who were actually ghetto hoodlums. Huey, the pure ennobled revolutionary brother, murdered a black prostituted and himself was dispatched trying to rob a couple teenaged crack dealers. Leftists remind me of Himmler weeping over a beautiful Brahms lullaby as he sent cattle cars of Jews to the crematorium. They are totally guided by emotion while capable of committing heinous evil.

Some of those you mention were pop culture cartoon characters, but the ideologues of the left like Herbert Marcuse and Franz Fanon were also of another generation and flat out communist revolutionaries

Bill Clinton gave us the notion of offsets — one nod to a piece of feminist legislation and, presto, one piece of a young intern subordinate becomes OK.

Clinton presented himself as supporting the feminist/NOW agenda item of employer provided child care in the workplace, and presto facto, diddling the intern in the Oral Office with a cigar became just another ho hum topic.

Forever reducing the NOW gals to the ash bin of hypocrisy and shallowness.

As for the nexus of Islamists with America’s self-proclaimed hipsters, Islamists are due respect in the name of the hip religious tenet of “multiculturalism”.

Child rape, mass bombings, the lopping of heads and so forth, just annoyances.

Unfortunately Rob, the truth of your observation will never understood by those like HillelA, who still to this day no matter insidious nature of Al ‘Bulbous Gore’, still find virtue in him. Gore’s own wife couldn’t stomach the vile rankness, even with all the perks and the bennies.

Which leads to the question when we are told we must compromise with the Left, how do you compromise with fraud and theft without becoming a fraud and thief?

Excellent write-up VDH. Of course none of this would be possible without the dumbing down of our public education system – the total submission to progressivism by the MSM – and of course the democrat party without which none of these contradictions would have the half life of a fruit fly. Since 51% of voters are of a low information nature with the IQ something just north of a sponge this all flies over their collective heads.

The left pretty clearly practices a version of the long-defunct catholic practice of an “indulgence” i.e. do enough good deeds for “the cause” and you can indulge yourself in verboten practices. It comes pretty natually to people of an elitist mindset.

Progressives, being blissfully ignorant of history as usual, don’t realize the corrosive effects of this practice.

Yes. Exactly. Nowhere is this more apparent then in the concept of “carbon credits”among the green movement. The whole idea that paying money to the cause absolves you of your “sin” of energy use fits the concept of indulgences to a T. Really, what is the difference between Al Gore flying around in a private jet while railing about global warming and saying it’s ok because of his “carbon credits” and a medieval Catholic king who takes a second wife but remains righteous in the eyes of the church because of the indulgences he bought?

By definition once something is recognized as “hip” it no longer is. By defining all of the popular stuff VDH doesn’t like as “hip” he becomes the hippest hipster.

From the formerly Hip Huey Lewis and the News:

I used to be a renegade, I used to fool around
But I couldn’t take the punishment, and had to settle down
Now I’m playing it real straight, and yes I cut my hair
You might think I’m crazy, but I don’t even care
Because I can tell what’s going on

It’s hip to be a square
It’s hip to be a square

I like my bands in business suits, I watch them on TV
I’m working out most everyday and watching what I eat
They tell me that it’s good for me, but I don’t even care
I know that it’s crazy
I know that it’s nowhere
But there is no denying that

I have known exactly one sociopath in my life. My former boss was an embezzler, a wife-beater, abuser of his employees, a serial liar, a hypocrite, and a highly successful salesman. One day in all innocence he looked me in the eye and asked “why does everybody hate me?” The longer I live the more I see his character reflected in our national leadership. On the right we had Dick Nixon who was known for his malice toward political opponents and members of the press. But we’ve never had a president until now who was motivated by malice toward the entire society. The esteemed Dr. Krauthammer misses the mark when he states that Barack Obama is a garden-variety, European-style, socialist. No, Obama is a sociopath, and he’s surrounded by other sociopaths. God help us.

I agree with you, Barack Obama is clearly a sociopath. The following outlines this very well. It is clear he surrounds himself with sociopaths, too. Bill Ayres and his wife come to mind.

Profile of the Sociopath

Glibness and Superficial Charm

Manipulative and Conning
They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.

Pathological Lying
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities. Extremely convincing and even able to pass lie detector tests.

Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, they have victims and accomplices who end up as victims. The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.

Shallow Emotions
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.

Incapacity for Love

Need for Stimulation
Living on the edge. Verbal outbursts and physical punishments are normal. Promiscuity and gambling are common.

Callousness/Lack of Empathy
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others’ feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.

Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature
Rage and abuse, alternating with small expressions of love and approval produce an addictive cycle for abuser and abused, as well as creating hopelessness in the victim. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.

Early Behavior Problems/Juvenile Delinquency
Usually has a history of behavioral and academic difficulties, yet “gets by” by conning others. Problems in making and keeping friends; aberrant behaviors such as cruelty to people or animals, stealing, etc.

Irresponsibility/Unreliability
Not concerned about wrecking others’ lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.

Lack of Realistic Life Plan/Parasitic Lifestyle
Tends to move around a lot or makes all encompassing promises for the future, poor work ethic but exploits others effectively.

Criminal or Entrepreneurial Versatility
Changes their image as needed to avoid prosecution. Changes life story readily.

——————————————————————————–

Other Related Qualities:

Contemptuous of those who seek to understand them
Does not perceive that anything is wrong with them
Authoritarian
Secretive
Paranoid
Only rarely in difficulty with the law, but seeks out situations where their tyrannical behavior will be tolerated, condoned, or admired
Conventional appearance
Goal of enslavement of their victim(s)
Exercises despotic control over every aspect of the victim’s life
Has an emotional need to justify their crimes and therefore needs their victim’s affirmation (respect, gratitude and love)
Ultimate goal is the creation of a willing victim
Incapable of real human attachment to another
Unable to feel remorse or guilt
Extreme narcissism and grandiose
May state readily that their goal is to rule the world

(The above traits are based on the psychopathy checklists of H. Cleckley and R. Hare.)

I often like so-called hipsters as individuals and they like me as someone decidely non-hip but we both tend to hate what grows around it.

Many people do have artistic and musical abilities that they pursue and often at the expense of more lucrative jobs. These people are decided individualists and being so see right through those who are into it for the party, the scene making and also the Left’s attempt to co-opt everything. Even if they have a belief that coincides with a Leftist viewpoint they get it immediately when someone is using art or music for different ends.

As individualists they learn first hand about the market. You do not need to be rich or famous but you do need to know where and to whom you can sell to and have an excellent idea of what the market will bear. You must understand your own talent, what you are good at, what you are not and what you need to improve. You need to be out in front of things and not passively waiting to see what is “in”. They learn first hand that you can be in then out then in again and then out. Public favor is fickle. An individual can always however be “in” with themselves and continuing working and trying.

How many bad artists have used the line “I am not what the establishment wants”? Real working artists know that the real problem is that failed artists are what no establishment wants.

Artist and musicians deal with government and market realities as much as any businessman. They may work as graphic artists primarily and have more freeform work that they do. They need to sell it, produce it, get future business and make the kind of compromises that the real world demands while still maintaining their own integrity, self-respect, etc. They are small businessmen in every sense of the word.

Its ok to denounce hip and cool but know what you are denouncing. Libertarians are making inroads with this group but conservatives can too.

There are plenty down to earth, non-hip civil servants out there but they do not understand the challenges of small businesses that an independent graphic artist or musician might. That is also a problem.

I appreciate the feedback. You are touching on the right wing contradiction. It is all about allowing people to be individuals but to protect ourselves from government while also allowing government to do the things we need government for there is a need of some sort of collective action.

Anyway the inroads I am talking about was the fact that having galleries, etc. some have come to see our side of the position. Libertarians did not really target them the way Dems target low information voters. There is far, far less to be uncomfortable about.

“Many people do have artistic and musical abilities that they pursue and often at the expense of more lucrative jobs.”

I’m totally fine with this, everyone should live their lives as they see fit. The problem comes in when those same hipsters go $200k into debt attending a 4 year $50k/yr school and demand that the government pay for it because their degree offers no job remotely capable of paying it back. Or when they insist on doing part-time gigs instead of less pleasant jobs and demand that the public provide their health insurance. Or when they complain how “unfair” it is that the guy who pursued the more lucrative job at the expense of other things lives in a nicer place, drives a nicer car, has more stuff. The biggest problem comes when they vote for soulless politicians who feed these lies back to them and act on them once elected.

Again, I have no problem with someone who chooses to pursue a non-lucrative path, as long as they accept responsibility for that choice and don’t demand that society support them. The vast majority of “hipster” types I’ve known are redistributionist leftist types who either live off their parent’s wealth or constantly complain about how broke they are without doing anything to change that beyond voting for Democrats. Just look at the sorts who showed up at the “occupy wall street” protests to see who I’m talking about: all decked out in the latest hipster attire, toting iphones and other gadgets, and demanding that they be given others money. Them I have nothing but contempt for.

Brilliant article. It’s also amusing in a sad, sorry sort of way. Speaking of the fraudulent hipsters, I’m reminded of Bill Maher’s “politically incorrect” show which was always comforting in its political correctness. As Ayn Rand wrote: “There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.”

The only tactics missing from another profoundly thorough essay by Dr. Hanson is “shuck & jive” and “flim flam”, which are major components of Obamas administrative style. And it fits his faux intelligence.
This expertise will appear when Hillary testifies.

Katie Couric were a spokeswoman for GM or Chrysler, would we resent her $15 million salary, and cite it as an example of the growing divide between the relative compensation of management and labor? The answer is yes she could because those companies are favorites of the current Andinistration. If she worked for Shell Oil, Brown and Root or God forgive a Military contracting company she would be hung.

A moral society, a clear thinking society would see right through the abject hypocrisy of the left. The reason that the election results of 2012 have left me so bitter is the realization that the battle has been lost – and in fact was lost years ago.

I should have come to that realization during the Bill Clinton years, but in my weakness, my naivety or perhaps wishful thinking, I could not bring myself to admit that indeed America had become so corrupted and amoral to sink so low. Worse, most of it has transpired within my own lifetime and like the proverbial boiled frog, I had become numb to the transgressions.

Many here have provided some real wisdom with their posts, but today Eon has put it best and it bears repeating:

The motives excuses of the left are equality and raising up the poor. The results are the biggest pile of dead bodies in human history, thus betraying their true motivations.

When I finally came to the realization that it wasn’t gross incompetence but true motive to do evil and gain what our real enemies perceive as ultimate authority accompanied by absolute power, their plans have become much clearer. And until more people come to this realization of what the real end game is, there is no effective way to fight this battle.

I am tempted to share your pessimism. If there is to be a correction cycle, it will be long acting and since the younger generations are all caught up in this Progressive scam, the rest of us who see the reasons to fight clearly enough will likely not outlive the war. So why bother? On the other hand, perhaps there is nothing else as meaningful that we could do with your lives at this point . . sort of a Fellowship for Freedom to borrow from LOTR.

In all of the reading and thinking that I do on the subject, I keep coming back to the principle of limited government as the only answer and it seems the only way to get that back is civil disobedience. “Don’t pay & don’t obey” unless it fits within the small circle of things that the federal government is authorized to handle according to the constitution. If enough of us would make such a pledge and act accordingly it might actually work. There would be harassment, incarceration and violence from the regime – but eventually something would have to give. Oops – someone’s at the door . . .

All you have to do is cry for the poor, defame the successful, claim your morals can’t be questioned and say your opponents are the essence of evil and you have become the ultimate liberal.

Lying, cheating, sexual license, gross money grubbing, etal. are all glossed over as long as you espouse “hip liberal” views.

Bye the way what on earth is a community organizer if not a rabble rousing, rent seeker who sees government as the path for his personal fame and fortune. Is southside Chicago one lick better or improved in any way because of Barry’s work there?

“How did corpse-man not win the NPR vitriol that nu-cu-lar had in the past?”

I blame Obummer’s Americorpse for giving me the flu; one of his fresh shock-cropse academy grads coughed in my face at the grocery and I was coughing for 6 weeks.

It is also relevant that they did not chide the Jimmy Carter nuclear engineer for pronouncing it nu-cu-lar, but did repeatedly pound the Shrub for it.

“Mr. G”, there is need for individual co-operative action to defend against initiators of force and fraud such as the leftists.

“lolly”, yes, it is interesting how leftist judges love those leftist ballots found in junked cars’ trunks, but the leftist elections officials do everything possible to delay sending absentee ballots to soldiers, and then suddenly become very punctilious on which of those to accept.

Being hip means that it isn’t what was said, but who said it. By definition that includes most Democrats and certainly all celebrities and journalists.

For fun, ask your hipster friends whether they agree or disagree with various statements without telling them who said it. You’ll see that the hipster quickly grows frustrated without the reference source. They have no independent reasoning skills.

Any imbecile like you that cannot identify Al Gore as a bulbous phony and hypocrite is not qualified to judge who is a phony. And anybody that claims the 2000 election was stolen like you did above is certainly not qualified to talk about ‘whiny.’

You don’t deserve a response as you are obviously a moronic troll looking for attention. However, since everyone else has wisely chosen to ignore your gross stupidity, I wanted you to know you had the pleasure of making at least one person gag at the magnitude of your duplicity and projection.

I wracked my brain to come up with a public figure who’s truly “hip.” Couldn’t come up with anybody. Filmmakers Joel and Ethan Cohen maybe? I don’t pay much attention anymore, so maybe there are some hip indie filmmakers out there. Ted Turner once upon a long, long time ago? Were Kerouac, Ginsberg and the rest of the Beats hip? How about Kesey and his Merry Pranksters? Surely there are hip musicians, but they’re not millionaire hip hoppers/rappers. They probably toil in near anonymity. I think there’s a good argument to be made for Bob Dylan at various times in his career (especially if being “hip” includes not caring what other people think your music means nor caring to explain it yourself). I always thought The Band was kind of hip. And Dave Brubeck. And Thelonious Monk. I dunno, maybe “hip” is one of those concepts that has lost all meaning, if it ever had any.

Hypocrisy is one of the fundamental aspects of liberalism without which it could not exist. The others are envy and hatred.

These three work together to crate the false elitism and “hipness” of liberalism. It allows them to exist in a very narrow and closed minded herd while believing they are all tolerate, diverse, and above all, purely good. Take away the hypocrisy and force them to see reality and liberalism would splinter albeit in a fit of rage and destruction.

That’s coming anyway, only it will be more general rather than directed at the necessary boogie men: Christians, gun owners, small business owners, kulaks, or basically anyone who dares question Obama’s wisdom. The violence is already beginning but isn’t reported by the media. Take away guns however…

There is no real hip because everybody’s hip. Everybody has access to the same influences. If all now-a-go-go young people watch MTV or Daily Show to learn what’s “hip”, how can anything be really hip? Hip in the old sense was the providence of the jaded and pretend-worldly, a sort of secret club. Politicians and other social climbing lawyers cannot be hip, they should be viewed like the weekend hippies in the 1960′s who went around wearing wigs Friday night to Sunday night. Oh, and nobody seems to want to remember how Jimmy Carter pronounced “nuclear”- it was just like Bush pronounced it. And how about JFK? The island of “Cuber” anyone?

In a way. “Hip” is sold to those unwilling or incapable of thinking for themselves and possibly standing against the herd. They want to belong so badly they will join almost anything. That is to say they will join groups with the (seemingly) least rules and judgements. To them that means groups that are pro partying on someone else’s dime and no judgements about what kind of fun you like. Since leftist groups put on that facade, that is where they gravitate to. Those groups are in fact extremely narrow and highly judgemental, just not against partying and drugs.

On a more sinister note, as Hannah Arendt stated, the left makes use of elite cadres to regiment its followers. So hipsters might join the lowest cadre for the fun but to gain status they have to join more elite cadre. That means shaping their world view and opinions to match these cadre. Nice thing about cadre is that more can be created at will to create a new elite while old ones no longer useful can be pushed down the hierarchy to favor a new political objective.

Things is, the hipsters don’t realize how they are being used or how badly this can all end.

I get this counter-argument all the time, about how can the media be a monolithic ideologic institution? After all there are no pledges or mandates that require a journalist be liberal, pro-Democrat, anti-Republican. There’s no way, the deniers say, that the media could possibly all be lock-stepped in their thinking.

But it really does come down to your cadre system. A square peg (conservative Republican) just might get a job at WOLD-TV in Hicksville, ID. But should that journalist try to advance to a regional or national news source, he’ll never make it past the interview process. The weedout process occurs in the hiring with those responsible giving jobs to “right” thinkers, and passing over the “wrong” thinkers. You don’t see conservative journalists because the door is already shut at the major news outlets.

There is also this strange phenomenon where government employees who are almost always the least best educated earn more than their private sector counterparts and have far superior health care packages. Then they are eligible to retire in their mid-fifties and get paid about the same as the average working person in the private sector while still receiving their Cadillac health plans until Medicare enrollment.
There is no rational logic that they can provide except “I was promised” or “I didn’t make the rules.” When people of similar age lose their jobs since the private sector is being drained, they do not have a rationale why they should get pension and benefits for being public sector while the private sector person gets hosed. When one explains that the politicians and union bosses that promised them stole all the money, they rationalize that the private sector must pay more taxes so that they don’t lose their Utopia.
It is sloppy thinking and lame rationalizations that in no way reflect reality. But they truly believe it.

“There is also this strange phenomenon where government employees who are almost always the least best educated earn more than their private sector counterparts and have far superior health care packages.”

I know most people on the right side of the ditch like to parrot this line, but it is rarely true at the state and local level except at the lowest levels of a government’s organization and some professionals and managers in the federal government. Some, only some, of the union dominated Blue states and cities are aberrations and pay employees whose unions have the right connections all out of proportion to any realistic wages and benefits anywhere in the public, private, or third sectors.

A front desk clerk or direct service employee in a government office is likely far better paid than s/he would be paid in a private sector job with the same requirements for education, experience, and demonstratable knowlege, skill, and ability. Likewise, a janitor or semi-skilled maintenance person would likely make much more in government, especially in a unionized government. Some of this is the monopoly effect of unionization, some a public policy decision basically as to which budget the government will pay low-skill workers from: its employee wage and benefit budget or its social welfare and public safety budgets. Low-skill employees with relatively high wages in a government job buy houses and cars and send kids to college. Low-skill workers at the minimum or a subsistence wage are a social welfare and public safety problem. I’m not arguing for one position or the other, just setting them out.

When one gets above the entry/low-skill level, most governments set their pay by surveying private employers and the general rule is that governments don’t want to lead but do not want to follow at such a distance that they cannot recruit and retain adequate employees. This is complicated by the fact that there are so many jobs done only by government and consequently, one only has other governments to compare to. When Alaska’s corrections officers and cops mentioned California wages for these classifications, our only response was to suggest that they move to CA, but since these are employees who can’t strike and have interest arbitration to settle contract formation disputes, arbitrators do look at California and the employer has a devilish time persuading them not to. And, just for the record, I think law enforcement employees are far and away the most overpaid low-skill employees. In a unionized public employer, two guys with a HS diploma and no real work experience who can pass a background check and who are in good physical condition look just alike on an application and the minimum qualifications are the same for a janitor and a cop or CO except for the physical condition which can only be evaluated post-offer under the ADA. In a year both will have had employer paid and provided training; the guy who gets hired as a janitor will be lucky to be making $35K and the guy hired as a cop will be making $100K if he’s become “one of the boys” and is getting a good share of the overtime.

Above the entry level in administrative and technical jobs there are few jobs that exist other than in government, so there is little to compare them with. Only the largest corporations have anything like the kinds of accounting, budgeting, personnel, or procurement functions or have any thing like the scale of even a small city’s government. An MBA from the finest biz school won’t make you a bit better at knowing an using a government’s proprietary systems for these functions. That newly minted MBA just hired as a supervisor or manager in such offices is just going to be in the way of the people who started as a clerk and who’ve worked their way up.

When you get into professions it is very hard to find out what the private sector pays. We competed with both the oil industry and the federal government for biologists, geologists, hydrologists, all sorts of engineers, and similar professional employees. As a general rule, the oil industry would not tell us what they paid, but we knew that we lost a lot of professionals to them. The federal government paid better than we did AND had a non-taxable cost of living differential. Professionals would often vest our retirement then leave to work for the US’ better wages. So many “professions” only exist in government. There are very few private sector teachers or social workers and likewise very few private sector administrators, supervisors, and managers of such employees and programs. The only rule you can apply is that you pay what it takes to get and keep adequately performing employees.

Political appointees are a mixed bag; some would be unemployable in any job if they weren’t the pet of a higher level appointee and some could get paid far more in the private sector. I finished my career as a politically appointed manager reporting directly to a member of the governor’s cabinet. My boss and I served at the pleasure of the governor who served at the pleasure of the citizens. At most my job was secure until the next election but the reality was that if anything on your plate went wrong, whether or not you caused it, you were taking the hit for it and were going to get fired outright or if you had the right to do so, you could go back down into merit system ranks and hope everyone forgot you used to be the boss. As the weather got warm and the fishing got good in the spring of 2006, I knew that Murkowski wasn’t getting re-elected. Knowles wouldn’t have fired me but wouldn’t have let me be an appointee in a Democrat administration (I’d have just had to do an appointee’s job as a merit system employee and take the blame if anything went wrong) and Sarah Palin would’t have fired me but I would have had to put up with her and her Wasilla Hillbillies, so I decided July 1 was a good day to retire. At the time I had responsibilty for managing my state’s relations with 12 unions that represented about 15,000 unionized employers. In the private sector the person who does that usually has the title of vice president or general counsel and makes many multiples of my salary, though I would have had to leave Alaska for such a job and didn’t want to.

Mr. Hanson is about nineteen years too late. This ground is already well-trodden: Recall TIME magazine’s seminal (ahem) cover story “Everybody’s Hip (And That’s Not Cool)” of 1994, followed six years later by David Brooks’s “Bobos In Paradise,” an actual literate and thoughtful version of TIME’s pablum.

Allow me to be even more tardy by referencing Allan Bloom’s “The Closing of the American Mind” (1987). Dr. Bloom warned us of a more insidious threat which runs much deeper than the silly displays of entrenched public-radio effetes such as Leonard Lopate and Brian Lehrer poking cutesy fun at themselves for exemplifying the contradictions which Hanson describes above.

The Left has rationalized their hypocrisy. While we lament their dishonesty, they creep relentlessly forward, chipping away at the very foundations and supports of Western civilization (that is to say, all that is good and noble in humanity). Let us not be caught sleeping – but I fear it may already be too late.

What we really need is for conservatives to realize that they have to do the same thing as the leftists do. No principles have to be sacrificed. Do you think leftists sacrifice their principles of acquiring total wealth and power over humanity? Not a chance.

It’s marketing. We need conservatives who understand how to do it. A good first step would be candidates who at least recognize the requirement.

woodstock was hip because it just happened, the riots called woodstock were just poseurs trying to reenact and make a buck, so the punk youth of the eighties could say they were at woodstock too. if you gotta say you’re hip you ain’t.

Part 2: The more I think about this, the more appalled I become. While I respect VDH, I feel this is entirely off the mark.

We will be defeated by the Left every single time if we constantly tack in this direction. We are following their parade with a shovel, picking up the manure, and saying “Hey look!” Meanwhile, the parade lunges ahead, dropping even more gifts, and claiming even more intellectual victims.

We need to get in front of their freak-show, erect a barricade, and stop them cold. We have some 3,500 to 5,000 years of intellectual striving on our side from which we can draw and take inspiration. Why are we constantly beaten by these barbarians?

Jack,
Point taken. I agree! I have found to my surprise that it isn’t enough to discover injustice and/or lawbreaking and then shout out “I see you.” They have no shame, they continue with their injustice until forcibly stopped.

It often isn’t enough to point it out to others, and then complain that they take no action. E.g. “The MSM is always lying” or “The MSM lynched George Zimmerman and ignored hate attacks on whites”

We have to _act_. When we witness injustice, we (individually and or with our allies) must actually be the ones to interupt/stop the act of injustice.

We cannot rely on the MSM. We cannot rely on the DOJ. We cannot even rely on the Constitution, because it doesn’t protect us by itself. Rather it gives us the means to protect _it_, and by extension we then protect ourselves.

_We_ must boycott the purveyors of lies and form our own communication networks (like PJM and Bill Whittle at PJTV). _We_ must file lawsuits, or support advocacy organizations that file lawsuits (like ACLJ.org and LibertyCounsel LC.org, which has an appeal to Obamacare that has reached the Supreme Court) _We_ must improve our country’s moral fiber by going to a church with real standards, and supporting it. _We_ must help change the culture by exposing it to the light of day and justifiable ridicule (www.breitbart.com, Alfonzo Rachel at PJTV.com, and James O”Keefe at Project Veritas _We_ must donate our time, talent, and treasure, and be ready for annoyance, inconvenience, loss, setbacks, and sacrifice. We are looking for Patriots, and we found them. They are us.

It’s become a battle of good versus evil. It’s like America is Germany in the 30s. There were lots of Germans who were amazed to see what happened to their country because of one elected leader and his ardent followers, but… it happened.

This article is quite good and quite saddening. I don’t know exactly where the state of the world was when I came into it. I suppose things were always the same – big ideologies, big emotions and big hatreds. That’s even without discussing Islam.

VDH is so right about many of these issues. I wish that I too could dispute the pessimism of those like my friend Tex Taylor, but we are all headed for difficult, difficult days..

I don’t think it has anything to do with being hip or that it is a new phenomenon. Most prosperous people are Leftists or so-called Liberals so that they can continue to enjoy their riches without feeling guilty. Otherwise, they’d have to give up that $5 cup of Starbuck’s—and they have no intention of doing that.

We are in the Ironic Age, of course. Everything is irony, which must be met with sarcasm. Depth of feeling is only allowed to the Left. Otherwise it is mania.

Rolling Stone is the playbook; God forbid we call it the Bible, of hip. To be anointed by St. Jan of Wenn is to be elevated to the pantheon. And thus Bruce Springsteen of the monster estate and show horse stable and G 500 lifestyle is the paragon of the working man. Taibbi the Revelator speaks truth to power, and Green Day revel in puerile but oh so ironic rage against the machine.

Dictators are de rigeur, but only Leftist dictators. Rights are for me but not thee. and if you’re wearing just the right shoes and skinny shirt and jacket and listen to the right music and know the secret code words you are on the inside and not like the hoi polloi.

Except everyone who is hip now has tattoos and thinks the same way and follows the same lockstep trends. So then, what is hip?

“A Martian would see the modern university as an elitist enclave, where life-long tenured professors make lots of money overseen by hordes of even better-paid administrators, that together cause tuition for cash-strapped and indebted students to rise faster than the rate of inflation without any promises that their eventual certifications will result in commensurate good jobs. A non-Martian would instead appreciate the hip nexus of diversity, eco-caring, and gender-neutral inclusivity.” Touche, Dr. Hanson!!

Hip, like cool, is so subjectuve as to be meaningless. Like most of us are hip to the fact that Victor is a national treasure, and it would be really cool to vito visit, matbe help out during eaisan harvest. Can you dig it?

I had noticed this phenomenon some time ago, frequently asking the question “Why is it that Apple and Google get a pass from supposed ‘anti-corporate’ leftists, but Wal-Mart doesn’t?” I had thought it was because leftists have a bit of skin in the game for the former two yet little in the latter. (And none at all for businesses who provide them benefits they can’t show off, such as Blackwater) They simply *must* to have the latest slick gadget with an ‘i’ slapped onto the front of its name, or they like that ‘free’ email paid for with their personal information.

But your succinct explanation works so much better and addresses much more. Apple and Google are “cool”, Wal-Mart is not. It neatly encapsulates automatic actions of the low-information voters who make up the hipster left.

Exactly. They won’t turn on that immediate gratification from an Iphone, Green coffee cup, or enormous television (no anti-Sony rants yet). But Walmart is neither pleasing nor ever present in daily life.

Victor Davis Hanson is right the hipster pretenders have thoroughly infested our culture.
Remember, it were the philosophical ideas of the Enlightenment that made the birth of America possible. But remember also it are the philosophic ideas of the post Kantian era that are now destroying our Founders’ America. Much of what I see now happening reminds of 1930th Germany.
What happened in the chaos of pre-Hitler Germany and now in America became understandable to me after I read the book “The Ominous Parallels” by Dr. Leonard Peikoff.

Re:
“Barack Obama baffles his detractors. How can one who golfs so frequently, or who vacations in only the most tony resorts, keep haranguing the nation about the transgressions of the one percent? When he sees them stroll by on Martha’s Vineyard, does he jump up and shout out at their mansions: “You didn’t build that!”?….”

Obama does that stuff because he’s strutting around as a black man denying that he’s half-white. Obama does that ostentatious stuff because of that “Yes I Can!” attitude of the nouveau riche arriviste, just as his wife did so soon after being ensconced in the White House….remember her taking of in a big govmint Boeing jet airplane full of her claque for that Spanish adventure?….that was an example of “Now-Yes-I-Can!”.

I’ve been mulling over this issue from a different perspective- I have three kids ranging in age from 14 to 21 and haven’t a clue regarding what kind of advice to give them in terms of career choices. Up until now, it would have been the standard advice of medicine, law, and science that’s pretty much been what my family and friends tend to do. But there’s less and less value in any of that- those fields just aren’t “cool”, and definitely require too much work (and expense) for a very uncertain future.

It used to be that a person could become (or stay) part of the upper middle class with hard work and talent. Own a business or consider one of the pathways I listed above. But I don’t think that’s true any more- the trends in consumerism, politics and the pressures on the private sector seem to make it more a matter of who you know at this point. That’s why college has lost its value unless one is at a highly technical or Ivy League school. Knowledge itself is simply not valued. And you’d better be aiming for a career in government or working for a non-profit (unless you’re in media, I guess).

I really hesitate to counsel my kids to follow in their parents’ footsteps. I sure hope they can figure out how to navigate these rough and muddy waters on their own- I certainly feel that we have no advice to give.

Stop me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the point of Dr. Hanson’s comment the discrepancy between what his subjects say they want and what they actually do – for which hypocrisy is too mild a description?

They sugar coat their assaults, attacks, diktats with words like fairness, equality, social justice and compassion OR political correctness and affirmative action..

And outside Dr. Hanson, only a few like thim, and Sarah Palin bring the discrepancies to their doorsteps by point by point refutation. Few commentators mention the redundancy of their IMPOSED “compassion” etc by reminding them AND their audience that ALL those intentions ARE embodied in the identity of the American Republic/citizens.

ALL part of the DNA via the double helix of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Which protects Rights of Americans from just such control freaks interference in citizens individual “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness”. Which they are continuously and successfully ignoring or dismissing as identifying to America and her citizens. CHANGING the identity, ie. identity theft.

So successful have these compassionate liberals been in selling their snake oil and poisons to the citizens via glamourous and smarmy public personages in TV, Hollywood and government America is now on life support.

So whatever name-calling or insults, however satisfying for venting spleen we need to call the emergency squads to provide CPR. And fast.

Isn’t it interesting that these hip literati can receive constant praise for their supposed compassion for the poor, while at the same time their actual behavior and lifestyles, all subsidized by big gov favoritism, and their disdain for the ordinary people iin the rural provinces, are much more like the Capital City people in Hunger Games. Apparently mouthing the proper leftist platitudes basically makes you excempt from any sort of personal standard.
But the typical low information voter does not see any of this, they just see people who are cool.

If you are hip and empowered in Non-Flyover Country, What do you say to an Active Shooter? Your security team speaks for you: BANG!

If you are Obama in all of our Country and the same thing happens, the answer is the same: BANG!

If you are not hip, not empowered and live in Non-Flyover Country (i.e. liberal East and West coasts), What do you say to an Active Shooter? You can say nothing with your arm, because you don’t have a right to carry an arm, as non-Flyover Country has no Constitution to speak of.

“Could not Wal-Mart put memorable lines from Shakespeare on its plastic bags, or a Greek hexameter from Homer, or sell vitamin water called Sophos, Kalos, or Logos,…” Actually, I think that would be cool. That might turn me from a generally satisfied customer into a fanboy.

“…or pipe in John Lennon’s “Imagine”?”…Nope. that’d be a deal-breaker.

Hip is only hip if it’s meant to be hip. Brand has become everything. Even personal lives are supposed to be branded and curated (down to the shoe laces) to get anywhere in the workplace where image increasingly trumps intelligence and competence. That and becoming a social butterfly with the aim to be a highly followed vacuous social media opinion leader. It’s hard not to think of all this is nothing more then narcissism of GenY trying to stay ahead of Millennials on the totem totem poll. Tell me it isn’t so. If you don’t believe me, look at what Forbes is preaching about the “new workplace”